Traditionally, the radio parts of the transmitter chain of an electronic communication device have been working in the analogue domain. Digital radio functionality may, however, also be implemented, and digital radio parts of the transmitter chain are becoming increasingly popular.
In the course of development of digital radio chips, a digital interface standard, “DigRF, Dual-mode 2.5G/3G, Baseband/RF IC”, Interface Standard, v3.09, 22 Nov. 2006 (henceforth denoted DigRF), has been developed to handle the interface between baseband modules and digital radio modules.
It may be desirable to adjust the time alignment of data packets transferred from a baseband module. Not being able to adjust the time alignment can be problematic in some situations. For example, a data packet misalignment may create problems in the base station. Such problems may be highly severe, such as for example a lost connection.
For example, if the mobile device is moving towards/away from the base station during a connection, the transmission time between the mobile device and the base station will change over time since the distance between the mobile device and the base station changes. Thus, there will be a time drift or misalignment between the data packets at the base station. Since the base station and the mobile device communications may be controlled by specific timing, drifting out of this timing may be detrimental to the connection. In connection to this example situation, reference may be made to the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standard documents TS 25.214 (2007-12), Section 4.3.4, TS 25.133 (2007-12), Section 7.1, and TS 25.211 (2007-12), Section 7.6.3.
Thus, there is a need for adjusting the time alignment to compensate for misalignment.